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“My dear Sidse,” he replied, “there’s no sin in that—none
at all. Would you call it a sin, Colonel Gyldenlöve?
No? Surely not. Does not even Holy Writ tell of witches
and evil sorceries? Indeed and indeed it does. What I was
about to say is that all our humors have their seat in the
blood. If a man is fired with anger, can’t he feel the blood
rushing up through his body and flooding his eyes and ears?
And if he’s frightened o’ the sudden, does not the blood
seem to sink down into his feet and grow cold all in a trice?
Is it for nothing, do you think, that grief is pale and joy red
as a rose? And as for love, it comes only after the blood
has ripened in the summers and winters of seventeen or
eighteen years; then it begins to ferment like good grape-wine;
it seethes and bubbles. In later years it clears and
settles as do other fermenting juices; it grows less hot and
fierce. But as good wine begins to effervesce again when
the grape-vine is in bloom, so the disposition of man, even
of the old, is more than ordinarily inclined to love at
certain seasons of the year, when the blood, as it were,
remembers the springtime of life.”
“Ay, the blood,” added Oluf Daa, “as a man may say,
the blood—’t is a subtle matter to understand—as a man
may say.”
“Indeed,” nodded Mistress Rigitze, “everything acts
on the blood, both sun and moon and approaching storm,
that’s as sure as if ’t were printed.”
“And likewise the thoughts of other people,” said
Mistress Ide. “I saw it in my eldest sister. We lay in one bed
together, and every night, as soon as her eyes were closed,
she would begin to sigh and stretch her arms and legs and
try to get out of bed as some one were calling her. And
’t was but her betrothed, who was in Holland, and was so
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